Why did LEGO Universe waste the chance for sets?

[jemm13]

How come LEGO Universe never got a line of sets? Considering it had a story, the factions and the Nexus could have been the main focus, with spare pieces to use on customizing minifigures. Heck, when the game was out, I envisioned LEGO adding a line where you could buy packs of minifigures that featured different weapons, armor, clothes, and accessories that either fit into LU generally or where part of a faction, like a proto-Minifigure line. I forget if my idea was based around mystery bags or not, but another idea I had was a set that had a collection of minifigures and small builds with tons of weapons and armor from in-game like the boxed collections of minifigures.

But childhood ramblings aside, why didn't they promote it like they did with the LEGO Movie with sets? At the very least they could have added onto the price like it was a licensed line and diverge the extra money to the game itself to pay for moderators and admins (maybe even give some free time in the game so kids could try out the wider game, and maybe give their characters a collection of pieces to add to their existing collection in the freebuild islands, cars, and rockets). I remember seeing all the cool gear you could get in-game and how cool the enemies looked, and wondered why they didn't at least make the pieces available in some smaller line so kids (i.e. me and my friends) could use them in their builds and allow them the feeling of making stuff in the game. Wouldn't you like making a mech while having official pieces that had your faction logo and had a 1-to-1 recreation of your actual character's appearance and high-level gear with his pet skunk co-piloting?

The only reason I say this is because there were instances where elements would show up in LU and there wouldn't be any real life equivalent, either because the designers took liberties with the pieces and their connections (even though ironically some could have been made real easily as the pieces were just edits of existing ones) or because they designed stuff, like the faction and enemy pieces, that don't have a clean, official real life counterpart.

I don't even care if LU can't come back as an MMO, considering how hard it is to run a family friendly one without the world's best team of mods, admins, and (because it's LEGO) software algorithms, but considering how popular it was in general, making the move to sets and another medium for story, like a single player/local multiplayer game, tv show, or full line of comics wouldn't be outside the realm of a possible success. And it wouldn't have even been a bad idea to release the full code (I wouldn't even care if I had to pay for it) for the game to more easily let its own community continue hosting the game by letting them set up their own servers a la Minecraft.

I just feel that there was too much wasted when the game ended and TLG left it fully in the dust with little to nothing salvaged.

Edited August 5, 2018 by jemm13
forgot the tags, my bad!

[Lyichir]

You're assuming there was a chance for sets at all. The point of The Lego Movie sets was not to promote The Lego Movie—with media-based themes like that, it's almost entirely the other way around, with the popularity of the movie acting as promotion for the sets. As such, sets based on Lego Universe wouldn't necessarily make the game itself more popular, let alone fix the moderation problem or make the game easier to monetize.

Ultimately, Lego was probably smart not to invest even more in that game than they already did. That'd most likely just increase their losses when the game finally went kaput.

[jamesster]

On 8/7/2018 at 3:28 PM, Lyichir said:

You're assuming there was a chance for sets at all. The point of The Lego Movie sets was not to promote The Lego Movie—with media-based themes like that, it's almost entirely the other way around, with the popularity of the movie acting as promotion for the sets. As such, sets based on Lego Universe wouldn't necessarily make the game itself more popular, let alone fix the moderation problem or make the game easier to monetize.

Ultimately, Lego was probably smart not to invest even more in that game than they already did. That'd most likely just increase their losses when the game finally went kaput.

LEGO Universe is a bit of a unique case. The game was envisioned as an ambitious attempt at bringing core LEGO play to the digital world, not just another LEGO video game (though that vision and ambition was gradually cut down for a variety of reasons... though that's another story), and most of the plans they had for physical tie-ins were similarly ambitious: The idea was to feature a continuation of LEGO Factory/Design by Me, with players being able to order physical versions of their models and in-game avatars, including new minifigure pieces designed for the game, many of which were very high detail for the time (but comparable to minifigure designs from more recent years, in printing detail/amount of custom pieces/overall complexity... LU was just ahead of the curve in that aspect, haha).

Much on the subject's already out on the internet in various places, but there's other details that have come up more recently... I've had some conversations with content designer Chris Floyd and concept artist Jerry Meyer over the past few months, Chris was on the project from the beginning in 05-06 to late 2007, and Jerry was working on it all the way from the beginning to the end in 2012.

First, from Chris - remember this would have been from somewhere in 2005-07, and the game's launch ultimately didn't happen until 2010 (and by that point it was fairly different from what had originally been envisioned):

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The CEO of Lego visited our offices one time and told us that LU was critical to their future marketing. They wanted it to drive the creation of box sets and have tons of crossover between physical and digital. If it was that important, unfortunately, they just didn't give it enough attention or put the right people on it.

While writing this up I was curious if the box sets he mentioned referred to a line/theme of sets, or the LEGO Factory type thing, so I shot him a message to which he kindly and quickly replied:

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It was the Lego Factory type thing, as I recall. Although I’m sure if LU had been an enormous hit, they would have made retail sets with the characters and models...

I also showed him some of the custom minifigure prototype packaging and such that came after his time working on the game (more on that below) to which he said:

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Yeah, I think they were starting with minifigs to test the process, which makes good sense.

Also, from Jerry - a common sentiment, it seems...

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I always thought it would be so cool if LEGO came out with some LU-themed play sets. They have so much existing artwork at their disposal. 

Gradually the inclusion of LEGO Factory/ordering your models and minifigures shifted from "This will be a main, defining feature!", to "We still hope we can do this some day". It seems they were still aiming and hoping for it up to the end when development was halted; the latest thing I can find mentioning it is from August 2011 (the game was axed a few months later in November).

Some articles from early 2008:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080310020505/http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=33675

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Lego hopes to distinguish itself from the current MMO gaming market by incorporating physical products into its forthcoming title Lego Universe.

As well as traditional online play, users will be able to design characters and other creations in-game, which Lego will then make into real products for the user at its manufacturing plant in Denmark

http://web.archive.org/web/20080306053129/http://www.gamesindustry.biz:80/content_page.php?aid=33674

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So you're taking the concept you started with Lego Digital Designer and bringing it to Lego Universe – users will be able to design and customise their characters online and then order the physical product from the Lego factory – that's your unique selling point?

If you look at our history in videogames, starting with Lego.com and Digital Designer, and the physical aspects of this, how kids can really customise characters and customise products that they build and then order the exact brick from us – that's a unique proposition right there. We're very proud of that because there's no one else that can do that. That's what our supply chain is geared towards. It's about the customisation. We have the Lego factory in Denmark so we built the whole back-supply chain first before we built the game. From 1999, until now, we've been developing this concept.

Some images from a 2009 survey about the Minifigure Factory, showing packaging concepts among other things: https://legouniverse.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog%3AJamesster.LEGO/Minifigure_Factory

The game's community manager also shared photos of real, physical prototype of a personalized minifigure with designs from the game and its packaging/display capsule: https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/70cltf/prototype_minifigure_from_lego_universe_mmo/

A video from 2010 where creative director Ryan Seabury mentions they're hoping to get custom minifigure ordering in the game some day, including the custom faction kit pieces (0:10): https://youtu.be/BwI4SBvjm04?t=10

And he mentions models too in this article also from late 2010, shortly before the game launched: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134519/the_realities_of_a_lego_mmo.php?page=4

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RS: We just want it to be a fun game so a lot of people can play it, and if you're a fan of LEGO, it's just super cool to be your own minifig. You can take that character through a bunch of adventures and get cooler and cooler looking, and hopefully someday -- we're talking with the manufacturing guys -- you'll be able to order your minifig in real life, and even the models you build in real life, as well.

An interview with Jerry where he mentions they're still hoping to make physical versions of the faction kit pieces etc, from August 2011, not long before the game's development was axed (6:30): https://youtu.be/0PKoBbjjygw?t=390

And also, a rough concept for what a LEGO Universe collectible minifigures series box could look like (IIRC, this mockup was done by Jerry, but I could be wrong, it was definitely uploaded in the same batch as a bunch of other images from him though): https://legouniverse.wikia.com/wiki/File:Lego_minifigs_box_copy.jpg As far as I know there's no other info about this, I'd expect the LU team just saw the introduction of collectible minifigures and thought it'd be a good fit for releasing minifigures of LU characters and the like.

Edited August 22, 2018 by jamesster

[Dorayaki]

On 8/23/2018 at 5:30 AM, jamesster said:

And also, a rough concept for what a LEGO Universe collectible minifigures series box could look like (IIRC, this mockup was done by Jerry, but I could be wrong, it was definitely uploaded in the same batch as a bunch of other images from him though): https://legouniverse.wikia.com/wiki/File:Lego_minifigs_box_copy.jpg As far as I know there's no other info about this, I'd expect the LU team just saw the introduction of collectible minifigures and thought it'd be a good fit for releasing minifigures of LU characters and the like.

Thanks for the detailed sharing about the project. IMO it doesn't really ensure LU characters are gonna be in Collectible Minifigures (which would be the case similiar with TLM or NInjago series) but rather just make the CM characters appear simultaneously in the game and the bags. Maybe this was where the idea of LEGO Minifigures Online came from?

Edited October 15, 2018 by Dorayaki

[jemm13]

wow, you're way better at internet archeology than I am. I wish they continued the idea of the sets, or decided to do the sets first/come out at the same time, especially as a possible monetary life vest for the game (as mmos can take a while to become profitable). I think the problem was that they focused too much on the custom stuff first, ending up with them not being able to release anything physical at all. And I'm pretty sure the LDD part of Universe helped raise the cost to maintain the game by a LOT due to the content filters and admins needed to remove adult content. Maybe if they got a different studio to manage the game itself. Who know what could have prevented this from working or if it could work back then... What's funny is that all the faction stuff was already designed and would have been easier to implement into sets. That and the ships/cars as they had premade designs that could have been kits. And the locations had already been made.... Maybe a lack of communication was the issue with this part? Not keeping the game designers and set designers closer? Or maybe they already were and problems with the higher ups/lead designers kept getting the ideas pushed back. Or seeing as how stuff was just in the prototype stage, starting on the logistics of the sets earlier would have allowed more development time for the game? Implementing only finalized physical version for the game to avoid headaches from working around the lack of certain limits from the game design? Ah well.... 3D printing's now a casual thing for consumers....

[jamesster]

In the time since my last post here, this came up in the middle of a discussion with somebody else who worked on the game:

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Hmm thats true. Wasn't there something about them "experimenting with maelstrom" on purpose?

Yeah, but i remember there was supposed to be a "push-back" specifically from the Nexus, based on maelstrom "technology"

Some story-phase where the Nexus leaders invited the players to join a pushback fight using some half-maelstrom/half-LEGO models
It was supposed to be an chance/excuse for LEGO to make some really exotic looking sets

Physical playsets. But it was really hard to get the outragous (and cool) designs to comply with the LEGO guidelines/quality process. It would have happened though.

So, that's plans for a line of playsets confirmed, too.

Edited December 25, 2018 by jamesster